Revealed: The scandal of loving families whose children are being forcibly taken away to meet adoption targets

By James Chapman and Fiona Barton

August 20, 2005 / The Daily Mail

SOCIAL workers were accused last night of tearing children away from loving families to meet ‘performance targets’ for adoption. Experts said there was clear evidence of social services targeting parents they branded ‘not clever enough’ to raise young children.

Tories demanded an inquiry, warning that the system appeared to be failing people with learning difficulties or low IQs. The call follows a Daily Mail inquiry highlighting the case of an Essex couple whose two small children were taken away and put up for adoption last year. Today the Mail reveals another distressing case involving a 32-year-old mother who says her baby girl was taken into care because she was deemed to have a ‘borderline learning difficulty’.

Her daughter was adopted by a foreign couple and now lives abroad.

In the case of the Essex couple, however, the chance of a successful adoption is fading. Their baby boy developed hydrocephalus after he was taken away from them, two prospective adopters pulled out and he may never find a new family.

There are fears that Government attempts to speed up the adoption process – social services are urged to see it as a ‘positive, responsible choice’ – are distorting decisions about vulnerable families. Councils are accused of being too quick to turn to adoption in a desire to meet ‘performance targets’.

Since Labour came to power, the number of children in care has increased almost 20 per cent. The Disability Rights Commission, the watchdog set up to stop discrimination against disabled people, said last night there was ‘serious concern’ that parents with learning difficulties were being unfairly targeted. Research suggested that one in four children subject to care orders had a parent with a learning difficulty. Tory spokesman Theresa May said it was ‘deeply worrying’ that the system was failing such children and their parents. She said MPs were being inundated with letters from people who had children taken away in similar circumstances. Parents with low IQs found it ‘impossible to cope with the system’. Mrs May said there were now more than 61,000 children in care, the highest figure in over 20 years and an increase of 20 per cent since 1997.

But the prospects for children taken into the care system were ‘appalling’. They were two and a half times more likely to become teenage parents and 66 times more likely to have their own children taken into care. Between a quarter and a third of people sleeping rough had been in care. Mrs May said: ‘Anyone can see that it must be better for these children for us to support their parents and try to prevent them from being taken into care.'

The Education Department said last night: ‘The decision to remove a child is not made lightly and responsibility for making those difficult decisions rests with the courts. All involved work on the basis that the welfare of the child is paramount.

I am originally from the UK, but now living in New-Zealand. The legal system here , NZ being a Commonwealth country, receives it's "direction" from the UK. I work as a volunteer with NGO (non government organisation) concerned with mental health human rights issues. Almost all of the women members who have had children have entered the mental health system upon having a child removed by social services. The mental health system is often used as a "tool" to ensure that if a parent shows ANY signs of distress or emotional upset or even disagrees, or conversly to protect their mental health, shows too little emotion on removal of their child, for any reason, then they are encouraged first and then pressured to enter the mental health system. If they refuse then all promises of access to their child are withdrawn until they can be proven that they are mentally fit to parent. Once a parent agrees to have a mental health assessment they then considered to have a "mental health history" and so legally deemed to be a unfit parent. Furthermore this process circumnavigates any access to the first parent and child "rights" advocted in the so called and much touted as the "new enligtened" "soft" option of "open" adoption. This option is usually used as a "carrot" to lure older children away from their parents. These children are often provided with goods and services way beyond the means of the first parents and done in a way to alienate the first parent. Often this is done at the expense of granting the first parents the services that they are legally entitled to under normal circumstances such as home aid or educational services. When challenged the excuse is always that either the pearents are undeserving or the services are unaffordable, and finally "too hard to provide". Of couse this is totally unacceptable.I have experienced this with both closed and open adoption proceedures. (Or lessons on how to convert a open adoption to a closed one).It is one thing to take a child into protective custody and provide care and access services to vulnerable parents who may have difficulty managing and another to use these reasons as an excuse to permanently remove children without recourse and put the family through a psychological alienation process that will ensure that child is a "freehold commodity or product " for the adoption market for life. Many relationships between vulnerable parents and their children are subjected to alienating psychological processes instigated by the adoptive services staff and foster parent inhouse "training" which often introduce foster parents to the practise of parental alienation. These processes are designed by highly trained professionals to ensure that the emotional bond between parent and child is psychologically severed in favour of the adoptive family by using rigidly constructed "one way" or TINA (there can be no alternative) policy making processes, usually in the name of "privacy" and "security" or "protection" and finally if all these excuses fail affordability or convienience or simply continual non-compliance, (not turning up to meetings etc.). Regular media "expose's support campaigns which usually promote news stories demonising first parents and deitizing "heroic foster parents" protect against the possibility of success for any public campaigns promoting positve interventions to assist families in managing, such as making supervised access a humiliating and arduous for all involved. Visiting parents and children are often treated unfairly and punitively in order to make visiting a bad experience for all, including the foster parents. There are positive alternatives, but many people who support the current system/industry have too much to "loose" to allow a more positive system to take over let alone survive. There are only a handful of people who manage to go on the be able to lead a normal life of any description, as recent mental health industry only promote a compliant recovery from mental illness, which means a relinquishment of first parent rights.Adoption Services currently have the might of Church and State behind them, and are continue to protect their investment vigorously.

The mental health system is often used as a "tool" to ensure that if a parent shows ANY signs of distress or emotional upset or even disagrees, or conversly to protect their mental health, shows too little emotion on removal of their child, for any reason, then they are encouraged first and then pressured to enter the mental health system. If they refuse then all promises of access to their child are withdrawn until they can be proven that they are mentally fit to parent. Once a parent agrees to have a mental health assessment they then considered to have a "mental health history" and so legally deemed to be a unfit parent.

Talk about your betwixt and between adoption issues, especially when an adoptee learns (many years after the adoption-fact) the depressed/grieving birth mother has a so-called psych history. [Post-partum depression, anyone?]

Which came first.... the chicken (profound loss) or the egg (so-called mental illness)? To which I must ask... given the choice between post-partum depression and post adoption depression -- are both seen as being equal and the same, especially as either relates to an adoptee?

Meanwhile, consider what's happening to those put within the placement system. Yes, there are many children who have been brutally abused by parents who are unfit to keep a rock, not to mention a child... however, how many children put in-care are there because one parent died, or one parent abandoned the child/second parent, before birth? Those children are often put in-care because the remaining parent needs help, (and no other means of support is available). That single-parent, with child, must become reliant upon the care that which government or charity has to offer. What is given to the lost, filled with loss, grief-stricken children put in-care? Time and time again, we are discovering too much psychotropic medication, drugs not approved for pediatric use, is given to children put in foster/institutional care.

Care to see where this intervention leads?

Please read: Living with the legacy of care -- a MUST read for any child who has been put in-care and put on tranquilizers. The findings featured in that article sure put a new-spin to future care needed for those touched by social services.

Just received a call to accompany a young single mum of twins, who I have known for a more than 5 years, to CYFS(NZ). Child Services paid an "ambush" visit to her home whilst she was out and her child's father was minding his children. She has now been told to turn up before 1pm today. I have had reports from other parents and from news broadcasts to indicate that their has been a audit of government beneficiaries, following investigations that indicte that these agencies have been collecting data on people receiving benefits in particular,focussing on single parents being investigated for living in defacto/working/ and finally drug use and abuse. Testing positive for an alcohol test and smoking tobacco can be classified on file as drug abuse in these circumstances, but this is denied by social workers. Unless your house is spotless and totally "child proof" to the letter of the law you are classified as "slovenly". Most of the cases are anonymous reporter driven, this one included. There is no difference taken between having a "normal" family gathering and an all out party, which means that parents are forced to abstain from all social gatherings held at the home or be at risk of being accused of risking their child"s health. This means that if someone informs then you are hauled into the office to defend yourself against any claims they make. The mother concerned turned away someone who was drunk and wanted to "gate crash" the house, there was no party, just her mother and a couple of friends visiting. I have advised her to get to the Community Law Office as soon as possible. Her friend rang me and also said that the NZ based online advocacy sites for parents in particular are all non acessible. In order to ensure her, and her childrens' rights are upheld she needs to bring 2 other people with her. One to look after her children, as she has been told to bring her 2 year old twins with her. I am hoping that she will be able to get to the Neighbourhood Law Office in time, they close at 11am, and that they will help her. This by no means guaranteed. Her children will probably be in CYFS care before she is able to get legal representation. Will keep the site informed of progress. The social environment regarding care and rights of single parents in particular has tightened considerably, especially if you require a parenting alone welfare benefit. Often loss of custody into foster care is the norm, and most parents I meet who are having dealings with CYFS have to fight for supervised access to see their children and try to stay out of the mental health system. Retaining custody is not even on the table. Supervised access is often needed to protect the parents against being set up for child abuse charges. Any help and advice your site could give us, to enable us to get some sort of support system off the ground for people caught in this situation would be warmly apreciated. I believe that despite the so called "progess" in human rights law regarding discrimination about marital status, age and race etc, for many, incuding sole parents, the the social environment is worse than 20 years ago, in that these regulations and protocols are being applied to an ever increasing of parents, with a focus on those people who are economically dependant on the Taxpayer purse for their needs.

I don't have permission to give out his personal info but he is one of our contacts in the U.K And can provide far more info then I can. And is one of the loudest advocates out there I know of. If you have issues contacting them let me know and I will make contact and ask for permission to send you their info.